The First Scientific Concept of Rockets for Space Travel by Robert Godwin Part 6
From The Space Library
Context
So what possible sequence of events could have led this gentle cleric from the Scottish countryside to postulate such a thing?
Perhaps we must look to his essay in August of 1860 for a clue. That summer the subject of comets was on the top of his agenda. When Marguerit spotted a new comet intruding into the summer sky Leitch and just about every other astronomer studied it and filed reports. Leitch even mentioned that the stories of the previous bright comet in 1811 were fading into memory and the few remaining living observers were not proving to be very reliable witnesses. The most contentious debate raging around the observation of Comet III 1860 was a reasonable explanation for the comet’s tail. Leitch likens it to the sparks flying from a rocket. He clearly understood that it was not “flaming” and was comprised of extremely tenuous filaments of gas and dust, but the metaphor of the rocket may have sat in the back of his mind. At this point we can only speculate, but it seems clear that the scientific assessment of the rocket as the perfect engine for space travel now currently finds its earliest reference with Leitch.
Certainly we know that his understanding of ballistics was enough for him to lecture on the subject. The Minié rifle was a relatively new addition to the soldier’s arsenal, having been introduced just a few years earlier when Leitch was still in Scotland. It used a conical bullet that was designed with a soft skirt, such that the expanding gasses would cause the slug to rotate as it left the barrel and travel more accurately. This same form of stabilization had also just been applied to the latest war rockets. William Hale had improved the design of earlier rockets by adding rotary thrust, thus providing gyroscopic-like stabilization to his shells. It was the first successful use of spin stabilization for rockets. Both Minié bullets and Hale rockets were manufactured at the same time at the Woolwich Arsenal, and at the 1862 Exhibition, the Minié system and the Hale rockets were being demonstrated just one booth apart. [1] [2] (There can also be little argument that Leitch was aware of the famed exhibitions in London, since he owned the guide to at least one of them in his library. Perhaps he even attended one.)
This would all seem to suggest that Leitch was not thinking of firework rockets, but the newly devised spin-stabilised Hale rocket.
What are the implications of this? Is it possible that his writing landed on the doorstep of Tsiolkovsky or Goddard? We may never know, but we can certainly not preclude such a supposition. In fact we have solid evidence that Leitch’s essays did indeed remain in print until at least 1910, long after Goddard had his “vision”, without so much as a word altered. This also made them contemporaneous with Tsiolkovsky and Fyodorov.
Earlier References and Later Editions
The first reference to which we can certainly point is a book published in 1953 by the Chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, Kenneth W. Gatland entitled “Space Travel”. Written four years before Sputnik, Gatland and his co-author Anthony Kunesch actually cite the exact quote about the rocket, but were unaware of when or to whom it should be attributed. Gatland writes, “It is indeed surprising to find in a book ‘Half Hours in Air and Sky’, published by James Nisbet and Co in 1899 an accurate definition of rocket theory…When it is considered that even today the principle of rocket motion is constantly being misinterpreted, the significance of this short paragraph written so long ago by an unknown author, is truly remarkable.” [3]
Gatland knew that what he was reading was extremely important but he did not have the advantage of being able to “Google” the text to investigate further. In fact the book he cited was a text for juveniles and included Leitch’s essay about a journey through space without any attribution at all.
Noted space historian and artist Ron Miller also seems to have come across Gatland’s “find”, which he mentions in his 1993 book The Dream Machines. Miller observed, “The unknown author of these lines shows an appreciation and understanding of the principles of rocket flight unusual even among scientists of his day.” Miller had the knowledge to also appreciate that this may have been written much earlier, and stated as much in his book. [4]
This begs the question, how did Leitch’s name become disengaged from his own writing? It seems that around 1859 his publisher Alexander Strahan was in a partnership with a certain William Isbister.[5] Good Words had been their first major venture and Leitch's book was probably one of the first to appear on the Strahan imprint. After Leitch died, and after the 1867 third edition of his book, God’s Glory in the Heavens, Strahan was called to task by his investors. It seems that Strahan had built a substantial following for not only Good Words but also several other magazines he had been publishing. To pursue such a large publishing concern Strahan had been obliged to bring his printers into the business as silent partners, who were effectively operating as his bank. By 1872 Strahan had become one of the largest publishers in the English speaking world and had secured publishing rights to such notables as Alfred Tennyson and William Gladstone, but despite massive circulation for Good Words the company was never really profitable, in part because Strahan was overly generous with his payments to authors. Tennyson had even talked Strahan down from his original offer.[6] In 1872 the cabal of printers and other publishers which had been floating Strahan's efforts removed him and handed the company over briefly to William Isbister. The collateral which Strahan had used to secure the investors' support were the copyrights to Good Words. Isbister continued to publish Leitch's book until a complex series of share-swaps and takeovers brought an end to the original Strahan company by May of 1878.[7] However, just before the last of the shutdowns Isbister had begun a series of juvenile science books he called the Half Hour Library of Travel, Nature and Science for Young Readers. The volume on “Air and Sky” had first appeared in October 1877.[8]
Because Isbister's new owners managed to retain the copyrights to some of the works Strahan had published, from 1878 onwards they stopped printing “God’s Glory in the Heavens” and simply appropriated several of the chapters including “A Journey Through Space” and added them to the Half Hour Library. Perhaps most remarkable is the fact that it then seems to have never gone out of print, with editions known to have been printed in 1878, 1880, 1882 and1886 before the rights were then turned over to the James Nisbet Company who printed it again in 1896, 1899 and 1903. It was exported to Australia and as late as 1907 was still being advertised. One such advert claimed that it had sold half a million copies. [9]
The fact that we can now confirm that the true date for this text places it before even Jules Verne’s famous story puts its significance on an entirely different level. Click here for Part 7
Footnotes
- ^ The National Magazine, Vol 1, National Magazine Company, London, 1857
- ^ The International Exhibition of 1862, Vol 2, Clay, Son and Taylor, 1862
- ^ Space Travel by Gatland and Kunesch, Philosophical Library, New York, 1953
- ^ The Dream Machines by Ron Miller, Krieger, Malabar FL, 1993
- ^ Bookseller Gazette, London, Feb. 26, 1861
- ^ Alexander Strahan Victorian Publisher, by Patricia Thomas Srebrnik, Univ. of Mich Press, 1986
- ^ The Story of my Life by Augustus Hare, Dodd Mead, 1901
- ^ The Spectator, London, Oct. 6, 1877
- ^ The Age, Melbourne, Victoria, Dec. 20, 1902; The Argus Melbourne Aug. 3, 1907
